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Parents want answers on toxins at Dracut sports center

By John Collins, jcollins@lowellsun.com

Updated:
10/10/2012 07:13:24 AM EDT

DRACUT -- Seven Dracut parents whose children may have ingested toxic vapors during the years they played inside the former location of the Future Stars Sports Training Center told selectmen Tuesday they never saw any notices about ongoing hazardous-chemical mitigation efforts in the Navy Yard Mill complex, as the owner claimed he posted.

Responding to local parents' growing concerns and unanswered questions about the 100 Pleasant St. commercial-rental property, which the EPA closed in August due to unacceptable levels of trichloroethylene (TCE) and tetrachloroethylene (PCE) found on the site, Selectmen Chairman Cathy Richardson said the town will host a second informational session with EPA and Mass. DEP officials and pediatricians at a date to be determined.

"(The EPA representatives) have been very good about making themselves available, and have shown they're willing to work with the parents," said Richardson. "The parents definitely need to have another meeting to discuss this and ask questions. I would be concerned, too, if I was a parent who had a child that attended there, because there are chemicals involved, and it's scary when chemicals are involved."

Richardson said Future Stars owner Marc Deschenes and Navy Yard Mill's owners Frank Polak and Joseph DiCarlo will also be formally invited to attend the hearing.

The first hearing, held Thursday at Harmony Hall, was informative, but all concerned parties had either not not yet been made aware of the problem at the Navy Yard Mill or were unable to attend, Selectman John Zimini said.

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Addressing the board during the public-input segment of Tuesday night's meeting, Deborah DeVincent, whose 15-year-old son began practicing baseball regularly inside the now-closed mill building at the age of 10, said the owners are not the only ones deserving of blame for putting local children at risk. DeVincent questioned how the town's Board of Health could have allowed then-members of the Board of Selectmen to issue a special operating permit to Marc Deschenes on Dec. 27, 2005, when DEP documents show there was a known presence of the cancer-causing chemicals, TCE and PCE, on the site.

DEP officials cited former Navy Yard Mill tenant, United Circuits,

Inc., a printed circuit board manufacturer, for being responsible for

contaminating the site with chemical solvents from 1971 to 2000.

"I want to know why Dracut residents were never notified about this contaminated building that hundreds of children were going in and out of for years," DeVincent asked the board. "I would think that if the Board of Selectmen knew, they would have pulled the special permit and our children would never have been exposed to these elevated levels of toxic chemicals for five years."

DeVincent added, "TCE is the same chemical that killed nine Woburn children when it was dumped into the well water," and noted the tragedy was dramatized in the movie A Civil Action.

"You think people would learn from watching that, the mistakes not to repeat," said DeVincent. "By failing to notify us about this, how dare they have added to my son's or any child's risk of getting cancer later in life, 15 or 20 years from now?"

Also venting his concern about the indoor facility where he brought his son to play baseball for several years, parent Bud Rogers told selectmen "I didn't see any noticed posted, and I went in there all the time.

"If there is something wrong going on, I want to know," said Rogers. "And now I want to find out what my son was exposed to."

At the Sept. 11 selectmen's meeting, Polak said he would never put any child in harm's way in that building, and claimed he and DiCarlo had invested $600,000 in mitigating the toxicity levels at the site, before the state and federal government recently lowered its red-flag tolerance levels for TCE and PCE.

In other action, selectmen approved posting a $500 reward for information leading to the arrest of suspects in last month's felony theft of the 90-year-old copper drain pipes from the Dracut Memorial Library building.

The board also approved a request by Allard's Grove developer Gary Campbell to change the marketing plans for the proposed 48-unit, over-55 Grassfields Commons real-estate project at 474 Mammoth Road from individual unit sales to monthly rentals that will count toward the town's 40B requirement as affordable housing.

Grassfields originally received town approvals to construct the 48 residential units for sale in 2006, but the project was put on hold due to the economy, Campbell said.

"(Economic) conditions are now such that we are interested in finishing the development." said Campbell.

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